Hello everybody - PDL folks will know that I have a lot of projects running lately, but I felt compelled to push this one through at the moment. Threads folks are probably aware that I've been working on something lately and I now have something that is hopefully worthy of your close scrutiny. I would appreciate any feedback for the two modules listed in the subject line, both of which shall be distributed on CPAN under PDL::Parallel::threads.
PDL::Parallel::threads provides a means for sharing PDL data across Perl threads. Presently, it is not safe to launch multiple threads in Perl after loading PDL. (A simple CLONE_SKIP fixes this, as implemented.) It makes sharing of physical piddles and memory mapped files easy. I have hit some bumps with memory mapping on Windows, but I expect that'll get ironed out in the coming weeks and months. I can provide more feedback there if it would be helpful. PDL::Parallel::threads::SIMD provides a very simple interface (not stress-tested) for launching groups of parallel processes with the capability of performing barrier synchronization. This could almost serve as a stand-alone Threads module, but I tend to affiliate SIMD stuff with numerical computing, plus I use it in one or two of my tests. Perhaps when PDL::Parallel::threads gets pulled into PDL, I can spin off ...::SIMD into Threads::SIMD or some such. I just uploaded the distribution to PAUSE, so expect it to hit CPAN in the next 12-24 hours. You can examine the code on github: https://github.com/run4flat/PDL-Parallel-threads Thoughts and comments are welcome. PDL folks, I'd like to eventually move this stuff into PDL's core, so the more feedback I can get on it, the better. Thanks! David -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan
